In recent years there has been a re-emergence of interest in module-integrated electronics. The solar micro-inverter in particular has been noted as a product that has a number of benefits over the existing conventional solutions. These benefits include: improved energy harvest over the life of the installation, particularly in scenarios of shading or other causes of mismatch in solar photovoltaic (PV) installations; low voltage DC (less than 80V from a single panel), which is safer and significantly reduces arcing faults. Additional benefits of an energy harvesting system based on micro-inverters also include the ability to pin point failures or problems with solar panels (or solar modules), and the scalability by adding panels to an installation. The installation process itself is also extremely easy and can be considered as a plug and play method.
Solar micro-inverters enable true plug and play installation of solar PV modules. The ease with which these can be installed is a major selling point for the solar industry. One additional task that has to be undertaken with micro-inverters is manually producing a physical layout description of the solar PV installation.
This is currently done in a number of ways. However, each of the existing methods is a manual process that uses pen and paper or labels to record the specific location of the solar micro-inverters and their respective panels in an installation. One of the methods is simply drawing the layout of the installation or using a CAD layout of the installation and writing down the serial numbers associated with each location. Another method is to have an additional removable label on each micro-inverter that can be peeled off and attached to a pre-drawn layout. Another method would be to use an application that is run on a smart phone that uses the camera on the phone to create layout of the installation. These manual methods add a layer of administration to the installer's workload and are error prone.
What is needed is a method or apparatus that enables each installed micro-inverters to self-register its serial number and location so a physical layout description of the solar PV installation can be automatically produced.